To the OP, I would suggest talking to your RC or local L3+s about your interest in judging premier events, they would be able to give you better feedback, and possibly include you in a premier event based on your interest

Also make sure you have a good relationship with your RC. The TO will contact your RC and ask for an opinion, and even if you're an amazing judge if they do not know that or don't like you, there is no way you'll get staffed. I'm getting that right now so I am speaking from experience.

RCs tend to be pretty on the ball in my experience, if yours has a low opinion of you, I would talk to him, find out what his concerns are, and focus on improving those areas, rather than making passive-aggressive anonymous posts on Salvation.

You reminded me why I added Teferi. He prevents you from casting spells off of Suspend.

Yeah, I don't there's any way to beat the lock in the OP plus Teferi/Knowledge Pool. On a side note, The Abyss doesn't stop either of my kills through Erayo's Essence, as you can just play flash creatures on your opponent's turn to get around it.

I'm kind of curious to see what the smallest number of cards necessary for a hard lock is. Can anyone beat

Layline of the void stops that. Otherwise you could play Bruma (Via spellbreaker's uncounterablity), cheat a tackklemaggot into play, and then let that kill all of their things very slowly and eventually kill them.

Ah. Missed that. In that case, these should work.

Erayo's Essence Lock: Still working on this one. EDIT: Assuming that I can begin with any card in my opening hand, start by revealing Leyline of Lifeforce and putting it in play. Then Bane, Ixidron, Lab Maniac.
OTHER EDIT: If that doesn't work, cast spellbreaker behemoth into some random 5+ power fliers and a Vexing Shusher followed by a Dromar the Banisher. Then in your postcombat main phase, cast avatar of slaughter. When they attack with everything, as they have to, chump block with the random fliers, then swing with Dromar, triggering for white creatures. Then use Vexing Shusher to cast an uncounterable Worldfire.

Knowledge Pool Lock: Suspend Hypergenesis, then suspend a second Hypergenesis a turn later. Put Bane and then Ixdron in play off the first Hypergenesis, and unmorph Bane for a million. Put Lab Maniac in off the second one, and wait to win.

Also, the simplest way to beat deadmanseven's lock is 4 darksteel citadels, and then 4 simian spirit guides into an obliterate. Then you can just win with manlands, or really whatever you want.

Pass turn until you have to discard. Discard Bane of the Living, then Ixidron the turn after, and then lab maniac the turn after that. Then cast Artisan of Kozilek, returning Bane with the trigger. Next turn cast a second Artisan, returning Ixidron with the trigger. Bane gets turned face down, unmorph for a billion. Next turn, cast a third artisan, returning Lab Maniac, wait for one of you to deck out.

With the one person in question I tried being nice and it failed. And he was getting very personal in his attacks on me which is what lead to me telling the manager I was going to lay him out.

As far as purchasing product I will not be purchasing product there. And I'll be directing people to Walmart and TCGPlayer for their product in the future since the manager is condoning such behavior at the store.

It sounds like you have a very serious personality conflict with both the individual you threatened, and the manager of your LGS. Sadly, the best advice I can offer is to do what you already have done, and avoid those individuals, and the toxic environment at your LGS like the plague. Furthermore, given the small Magic community in your area, I'm also going to go ahead and say that opening a competing card shop is not going to be a profitable venture, especially given that you're going to be shutting out the half of the current Magic crowd, due to them being unpleasant individuals, and due to the friendly atmosphere it seems like you would want your store to have.

However, it seems like the only problem you have with the idea of just avoiding your LGS is that it doesn't let you keep your competitive edge, and if that is the case, I would recommend that you seriously look at playing MTGO. It tends towards having competition roughly equal to a PTQ or SCG Open, which is probably higher than that at your LGS, and, while there are D-Bags on MTGO, you usually only have to put up with one for 20-30 minutes through a chat window.

Whether you decide to take our advice and avoid your formerly FLGS, or do something else, just remember: It's not about winning or losing, it's about doing what's best for you.

If I recall correctly, the reason for making more 'snug' sleeves is so that the corners don't get bent as much, and the sleeves last longer. And while that's all well and good, I found out the hard way that you can't double-sleeve with these new sizes.

It's actually possible to double sleeve if you're using KMC perfect fits as the inside sleeve, but it's fairly difficult.

1.) Miserable prize support. Sorry, but I'd rather not pay $15 for an 8 person draft, and have the prizes be 3-1, when for the same $15 we could just all draft out of a box. They also have Zero prize support, aside from promos, for FNM or Game Day events, and the only event of the week they do have prize support is a whopping $2 buy in.

2.) The place is absolutely freezing in the winter. As in, the heat in the store hasn't worked for over a year, and AFAIK they have no plans of fixing it. They're located inside a mall so this isn't ungodly awful, but the average temperature in the store in the winter is no higher than 50 Fahrenheit.

3.) Ridiculously low inventory. They break about 1 box for singles every set, and nothing else. They also buy at 1/3rd the price they sell at, so they have very few people selling anything to the store. They also run out of packs with depressing regularity, and rarely have packs of anything but the most recent block on sale.

4.) The few singles they have are inconsistently priced, and the prices are never updated. Should there ever be more than one copy of a card in the sales case, it's a fairly safe bet that they will different prices, to reflect the price the card was when it got put in the case. Whenever this gets pointed out to an employee, the inevitable response is "If somebody buys it, they'll get it for the right price."(The store uses SCG for their prices). They are usually pretty good about changing the price down to SCG price, as long as the person buying from them knows to ask. Otherwise, they'll gladly sell you that Sorin for $60, or Tooth and Nail at $18. Needless to say, if I ever want to try to trade for something that's at an old and hideously high price in the case, it's an uphill battle to say the least.

5.) The layout is horrible. The play area is cramped, the employees don't have easy access to the singles, so trying to get anything involves them having to walk halfway across the store to get the cards, then back to the register, and for larger events we frequently have people having to stand and play at a counter, or sit and play on the floor.

My shuffle routine has become robotic after 18 years of playing. I do several mash shuffles and then pile shuffle. I can do this in under 60 seconds. I am lightning fast with my shuffles. And yes, it drives me crazy when people take forever to shuffle too. But please read the tournament rules. I'm pretty sure it says that you have 2 to 3 minutes between games of a match to shuffle your cards. I will double check that but I am pretty sure that's the ruling.

I am not a slow player. I am nowhere close to a slow player. I just happened to play a very bad deck for this meta. I had only my 2nd draw in all my years of FNM last night because of time pressure. The deck just draws out games. When you have only 12 cards in your library left when the game ends, yeah, that's to be expected.

Normally, I will play a "fast" drop land, drop critter, turn sideways deck. But I am just finding them so boring.

God, what am I going to do when I play my Curse/Pool and have to keep killing their dudes until I draw my lock? That deck is going to take forever too.

Or when I play my BW Superfriends deck with 16 removal spells and 4 board wipes until I land a superfriend and lock the game?

Those matches are going to take forever. I know it already. So what am I supposed to do...not play the decks?

I think the 45 minute time limit for 3 games is ridiculous. But hey, I don't make the rules...I just play by them.

When you get into control mirrors, games will take forever. There is no way around it. It's why all our nights go on so long because no matter how fast I play (on most nights when I'm just turning dorks sideways) I'm always waiting for some control mirror to end...almost all of them end in draws.

Maybe the time limits need to be increased. I don't know. Again, I don't make the rules. I just play by them.

But make no mistake about it, I never play slow on purpose. Hell, I don't want to draw. A draw is a death sentence at our LGS with top 8 usually going 4-0 or 3-1 at worst. I'm an average player at best so I need every win I can get.

A draw is disaster for me.

And for the record, I finished 1-2-1 that night. I needed the win against that person to have a chance for top 8. So where was my incentive to play slow and force another draw for myself when a draw does me no good? I needed to win...period.

Ok, I'm going to address a couple points that you've made across your posts, and I'd also like to point out how this whole thing looks like from an outsider's viewpoint.

Going solely from what you said in your posts, you were playing slowly. The fact that an unbiased observer said you weren't is irrelevant unless that observer is (a.) a certified judge, and (b.) was watching the entire match. By the IPG, a player is playing slowly if their opponent is at a significant disadvantage due to the time limit. Your match ended in a draw, therefore you were both at a significant disadvantage due to the time limit, therefore at least one of you was playing slowly. Judging by what you posted, it was most likely you.

If you are intentionally playing slowly for no purpose other than to aggravate your opponent, I would consider that to be Unsporting Conduct - Minor, which is not something you want to do, and certainly not something that your store owner should be encouraging from his players.

This is less of a rules thing, and more of a general philosophy thing, but the match time limit is what it is, and while I personally feel that it's fine, you're entitled to your own opinion. That being said, I do absolutely believe that you should not play a deck if you can't finish a match with it within the time limit, regardless of how "bored" you are with decks you can play at a reasonable pace.

I don't believe anyone suggested that you were intentionally playing slowly in order to get the draw, since that would be considered cheating, and is a much more serious matter.

Now, here's how I'd guess the entire story played out, and again, I'm only going by your posts and my guesses, so I could be completely wrong here, and if I am, I apologize.

You see the Frites deck online, and think it's cool, and want to test it out at your local FNM. So you build it, and take it for a spin. You end up playing against someone you haven't played before, and game 2 bogs down. It's a complicated board position, you're still not that comfortable with the deck, and you end up taking enough time to think about things that at the pace you're playing, the match won't finish in time. Your opponent, naturally, doesn't want to take a draw, and tries to get you to play faster. He's probably kind of a dick about it. You get annoyed, since you're typically a very fast player, and this is a complicated board state, and you don't want to pass up a win because you got rushed. So you most likely end up saying "okay" and then play at the same pace you were, since you still feel it's a reasonable pace to play at. Your opponent then decides that the best way to handle this is to keep rushing you, which is both kind of dumb and a dick move, and the result of this is that you get pissed at him, and your match doesn't finish on time. After the match, you vent to your friends and the store owner, who you're also probably on pretty good terms with, and they all agree with you on how much of dick that guy is, and how he was wrong about you playing slowly. You go home, stew for a bit, then post on here to vent. After the first few people agree with you as well, you start to feel better. Then, disaster strikes. A dissenter appears, and you start to get mad. How dare this person insult you and your friendly local store owner. Doesn't that guy know how much of a tool your opponent was? Surely he just doesn't get it, and you just need to make sure he knows who was in the wrong here. So you fire off a quick post to correct his assumptions, and assume all will be well. Once more people chime in with their own opinions that you might just be slightly in the wrong here, you get defensive, and start blaming anything and everything other than your own play.

So, basically, it's great that over 18 years of playing magic, you've only met one person you can't get along with, but keep in mind that every story has at least two sides, and since the people you meet on the internet are not your friends, we will not just accept your side at face value.

The shuffler is not random, that's impossible. No matter how you want to try and slice it, only a quantum computer can generate a truly random number. If the MTGO coders figured out a way to make a truly random number, they'd all have wn the nobel prize and be making millions working at the NSA.

Any computer with a microphone and a power cord that will allow it to be put on the roof of a building can generate true random numbers. It's called atmospheric noise and both the concept and technique are literally older than I am. Thanks for playing, though.

You just had to say that, didn't you. Fine. Creatures tend not to break formats (unless they make 20/20 indestructible tokens or recurring lifelinked 4/4's or are named Vengevine or are part of some other combo.) It was clear enough in my post that combos involving creatures can in fact break formats... Any other irrelevant points you would like to make?

So basically what you're saying is that creatures tend not to break formats unless they're, what, any good at all? Basically this is how your post reads:

Creature tend not to break formats except for all these times that they broke formats, oh and there's a lot more that I don't have the time to list out. But creatures still don't break formats, and you're wrong and I'm right.

Depends on the topic of discussion. For the purposes of this discussion, I am talking about Standard. That is why I brought up the discussion of R&D; R&D doesn't manage Legacy, they leave Legacy to mostly manage itself. They do micromanage Standard heavily, and in Standard the aggro-combo-control triangle models things quite well.

K, talking standard, valakut destroyed every aggro deck and splinter twin would have done the same if dismember hadn't been printed. Not counting caw-blade, which we shouldn't because it got banned for a reason, blue control has a traditionally poor aggro matchup. Also, the triangle still doesn't work in standard, since standard tends to be dominated by R&D's mistakes, which is actually what makes blue control an effective archetype, since decks playing counterspells tend to be more able to deal with broken cards than decks not playing them.

When was the last time Belcher or Countertop was legal in Standard? Oh wait, I forgot, it WASN'T. Nice strawman argument, but I'm not buying.

The legacy decks aren't a straw man argument, although I appreciate you trying to add legitimacy to your argument with the one logical fallacy you don't have to look up on Wikipedia. It makes this feel less like kicking a puppy.

Basically, yes. None of those things were true until about 6 months ago, and lo and behold, for those 6 months blue-based control didn't dominate the format! Huzzah!

Pyromancer ascension was the third deck I was talking about, and it was at it's best when time warp was legal. In case you do the math wrong on that one too, that's a year before the time frame you're talking about. While we're at it, mythic conscription was probably the best deck of the format, as an aggro deck.

Oh, and because you're obviously going to nitpick with me, yes I do realize Valakut was legal for about a year before that. The problem is that pesky "attacking with it" thing. Turns out control decks don't really let you get around to that part.

So what you're saying is that control decks tend to do well against a combo deck? GASP!!! If only some other person had thought to mention this.

Fine. There was 1 playable blue card in the format. I seem to recall the 56 Island 4X Jace deck was pretty solid.

I was talking about the UW deck that Chapin top 16'd PT San Diego with, but I'm sure your deck is alright too.

3) Blue control's popularity/power level in recent Standard has nothing to do with the power level of counterspells and everything to do with the failure of Aaron Forsythe as director of R&D. Aaron Forsythe (and Tom LaPille, and most of the rest of R&D, but I'm blaming Aaron in particular because he's the boss) hates linear combo. You know, the types of decks that make Legacy balanced. To analogize, what Forsythe has done is to take the game of Rock-Paper-Scissors and claim that Rock is broken, so Rock is now banned. What happens when you play a game of RPS where you can't choose Rock? You play Scissors and you smash all the people who like playing Paper because "it's fun and different". To bring this back to Magic, the analogy is the "Aggro-Combo-Control" metagame where aggro beats combo, combo beats control, and control beats aggro. If there's no combo, then nothing beats control, so control beats everything. You will notice that all the dominant decks in Standard in the past 5 years (with the exception of Jund since there was literally not a single playable blue card in the format for about 6 months) have been blue-based control decks.

Judging by the points made here, you do appear to have gotten hilariously bad at magic by reading this article. Some food for thought

A) Comparing Magic to RPS is about as relevant as comparing it to football. The aggro combo control triangle is one of the most simplistic ways to explain a metagame to new players, and other than that should be left to rot and die.

B) What world are you living in that aggro beats combo and combo beats control? Go watch people play Belcher against Goblins and then against Countertop, and see if you still think that aggro beats combo.

C) So you're saying blue based control has dominated for the past five years because there hasn't been, say, a two card combo that kills on turn four with no setup? Or perhaps some deck that only needs to resolve a single creature and attack with it to win? Or perhaps some sort of strange deck that did nothing but play draw spells until it found an enchantment that allowed it to cast all it's spells twice?

D) And lastly, I seem to recall hearing that that Jace, the Mind Sculptor fellow was playable, and Jund appeared to have done well after his printing.

So basically, everything you said was wrong. Except that part about Forsythe being in charge. That was probably right.